


vacation (had to get away)

by multicorn



Series: you wouldn't cheat at cards (i would if i could) [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Domesticity, Important Conversations, M/M, Nonnies Made Me Do It, Past Infidelity, and/or fights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 20:24:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13554912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/multicorn/pseuds/multicorn
Summary: Kent needs to go back to Vegas.And he doesn't know if this thing with Jack is a thing, or not.





	vacation (had to get away)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for their help to lomittz, sockich, and camilliar on tumblr, and the nonnies in the Check, Please! threads on ff_a.

"Preseason starts in three days," Kent says.

"I know," Jack mumbles.

They're laying, spread out, carefully not quite touching, across Jack's big bed. Post-workout sweat is only sexy if you catch it when it's fresh, when you're both in the mood; today they're laying on the bed as a brief layover of laziness before showering.

"You ready for the season?" It's not what Kent wants to ask, but - everything he wants grows and multiplies, til the vines of yearning twist around each other, blocking his throat.

"Sure," Jack says. "Guy's retiring, you know. But we've got a solid core. George has her eye on some rookies from the farm team to give us depth down through the fourth line - "

Kent thwaps his arm to make him stop. "I don't care about the Falcs. Are you…" Kent waves his hand between them.

"Oh," Jack says, considering. "Yeah. I think Tater's still mad at me. I don't know when he and Bitty got to be such good friends. And now it sounds like some of the younger guys are taking their side, but - euh." Jack rolls over, smushing more of his face into the mattress, and exposing his back to the chilly air. "I'm sure we'll be fine keeping it out of the locker room."

Kent lifts his head up, with an effort, to look at Jack. His blue eyes are guileless, as always. "Jesus, Zimms. Are you trying to be dumb."

"I'm not," Jack says, frowning. He pushes himself up off the bed, unpeeling the sheet from his recently sticky legs. "I'm going to take a shower, now."

 

Jack's looking sadly at his phone that evening when Kent comes into the living room, prepared to badger him about dinner. He makes grabby hands as he says, "hey, give," but Jack shoves the phone between the couch's cushions and its back instead.

Kent tries to dig it out anyway, but then Jack rolls over on top of his questing hand, and he's just too much bigger for Kent to dislodge.

"Tell me who it is, at least," Kent pouts. Since Jack still hasn't let go of his arm, he in turn is lying draped over Jack's back.

"It's my friend Shitty," Jack says.

Kent lets him sit back up. "You have friends?" he asks. "Can I meet them?"

Jack's fingers twitch around the phone that he's still looking down at again. "I don't know."

And Kent wonders. Is this the next month that he'll end up holding onto for the next decade? Or is it something more?

 

The next morning, Kent books his flight back to Vegas. Prices are already sky-high. Of course, he's been putting it off for weeks now. It's not that he needs cheaper fares, but he can't break the lifelong habit of looking for them. And there was never any way he could have not left. He has a hockey team to get back to.

He tells Jack over their breakfast of omelets and protein shakes and coffee. "I'm going home tomorrow morning. Just so you know."

Jack doesn't look up from the newspaper he's reading. An actual newspaper, like he doesn't live in the twenty-first century like the rest of them, like he doesn't know there are apps for that. "What time are you leaving?"

"The apartment?" Jack nods. "Sometime around nine. Nine thirty-ish, if I don't mind cutting it close at the airport."

"You always loved to cut things close." Jack stuffs another bite of omelet in his mouth before he's even finished the sentence. Kent feels like a rubber band stretched so far that the edges are beginning to tear.

"Not for a while now," he says.

Jack doesn't seem worried about anything, which is, admittedly, better than the alternative, but all things considered still not that helpful for the state of Kent's nerves.

 

After breakfast they work out in the building's basement gym. Jack lifts more than Kent does, like he always has. His squats, especially, are just ridiculous. Kent can go faster than Jack on the treadmill, and so he pushes it so hard today that he ends up running completely out of breath.

"You've gotta save something for later," Jack says, with a frown.

 

Later, on the couch, they watch TV. Jack's been in the middle of marathoning some house decorating show that he claims is 'relaxing' and Kent thinks is 'boring.' Kent sits sideways on the couch, feet tucked under his ass, the position giving him a shitty view of the TV screen but an unimpeachable view of Jack in profile.

"I didn't think you could get any more boring, Zimms. Good to know you can always find ways to top yourself."

Jack's lips twitch. "You don't think I'm boring." Kent knows that was almost a smile.

"Maybe." Kent shrugs. "You know I'm just here for the chirping material." Jack's hand's resting on Kent's knee, his fingers rubbing intermittently over the knob of bone underneath, even though he never stops looking at the people on TV discussing something about lighting and which paint shades to use where.

Kent doesn't want to lose this. And he's afraid he will, and he's afraid to ask whether he will or not. Asking Jack for anything hasn't worked for him in years. And then Jack kissed him, again, in that conference room, Jack chose him in an alley all unasked, and now? There's eighteen hours still left, and he can't risk scaring Jack away again.

 

Kent's packing his suitcase for the trip to Vegas: folding things, rolling them, tucking electronics carefully between layers of clothes. He's missing no fewer than three pairs of the shorts he'd brought, dammit, Jack. If he could've learned to ask for his wank material sometime between the Q and now, then Kent wouldn't have to unfold and re-fold cause his packing system got messed up.

Jack's lurking silently in the corner. Whether he's there to keep Kent from stealing any of his clothes - which, frankly, Kent feels he should have the right to do - or to spend the last twenty minutes they can in the same room, or just because it is his bedroom, after all, and he doesn't have anywhere better to be, Kent doesn't know. He doesn't ask.

And he's not ready to leave. His clothes are all in his suitcase, the flight info printed and folded into his wallet, but - he doesn't know, now that it's come to it, how he ever thought he could walk away from Jack again.

He tugs on the zip of his suitcase, frustrated, but it jams with the force of his pull.

"Here, let me," Jack says.

It's Kent's last chance. If he has to fly away, anyway - he needs to know if he can come back.

"What are we now, Zimms?" he asks abruptly. Jack turns wide blue eyes on him, like he'd somehow managed to never consider the question til now. "Just - tell me. I need to know."

"I love you," Jack says. His hand is warm on Kent's arm. Kent shakes it off.

"So, what does that mean? You said you loved Bittle when your dick was in my mouth." That had been a good afternoon, though, sneaking up on Jack and sucking him so quickly to hardness all the while he'd refused to get off the phone. Hearing his voice crack as he'd told Bitty that he loved him, and goodbye, while Kent licked the underside of his dick. The desperation with which Jack had clung to Kent when he'd finally let him come. Kent had felt like he was winning something, then. But now?

Jack steps back, looking taken aback. "Don't talk about him like that."

"Don't talk about _him!?_ What the _fuck!?"_ Kent's yelling now: he knows Jack hates it, but he can't help it. "Who cares about him? Aren't you here with me!?" Jack's edging away from him, now, one foot literally out the door. Oh, no, not this time. Kent reaches out, fast as anything, and grabs his wrist. "You don't get to leave here, Zimms," he says. But then -

He remembers, of course, it's not like he'd forgotten, not for a split second. He's leaving here, even if Jack isn't. He lets go of Jack, drops his hands to his sides, clenches his fists til his knuckles turn white. His fingers are shaking against each other. His heart, off-beat like an out-of-cycle engine, feels like it's shaking apart. "Not yet."

Jack comes back to sit next to him. The mattress dips under their combined weight, two full-sized hockey players too much for it to handle in one spot.

"What?" Jack says.

Kent tries to pull himself together. Wipe his expression, steady his voice. "Never you mind," he says. "I'll be out of your hair in half an hour, anyway." It's not what he wants, but it's looking, more and more, like it's what he gets. So, nevermind everything. He can always cry later.

"No," Jack says. "I don't want that." He touches Kent's hair softly, so softly. Not fixing it, or mussing it, the way he usually does, but just so he's barely petting the surface. The way Kent remembers that he used to touch Jack's hair, back in the Q. Back in the old days when he could barely believe that Jack was his touch.

"What do you want?" Kent asks. They're slipping off the bed, slowly, continental shelves silding inevitably into the ocean.

Jack doesn't answer in words. He opens his arms and pulls Kent into them, a hug made awkward over the obstacle of Kent's still-unzipped suitcase, his forehead leaning against Jack's solid chest. "Hm?" Jack says.

Kent feels the vibrations of it run through him, head to toe. "After I go back to Vegas," he says. "Are you ever going to look at me again?" Please say yes, he thinks. Jack runs an open hand down his arm to his hand and back up again. Please say yes.

"Kenny," Jack says.

Fuck's sake. Why can't he answer. Or better yet, ask why can't Kent want anyone else. "Because the way you cut me out earlier - fuck, Jack. Don't do that to me again."

Jack stops moving his hand, finally. He laces his fingers in between Kent's. "Do you know why I cut you out of my life?"

"No," Kent says. He doesn't want to know. He doesn't know if he could deal with hearing the answer, right now. But Jack doesn't seem to care.

"I could never say no to you."

When he was little, Kent tried to stand up off the ice on a leg he didn't know was broken. He feels the same way now: the shock, ow, staggering, it hurts, failing to rebalance. Too fast to do anything: the sharp shooting pain, buckling, falling. Crashing down, unprotected, onto the ice, face-first.

He sits straight up out of Jack's arms. "What the fuck," Kent says. "What the _fuck._ You said nothing but no to me for years, Zimms." He can't believe he's hearing this. "What are you talking about."

It's not a question. It's a statement of unmixed, unbridled disbelief. Jack has an answer, though, this time. "That's why I had to keep pushing you away." He says it like it means nothing to him. Like it's the date of a battle centuries past.

Kent thinks he'd trade just about anything he has to not be hearing this right now. His apartment, his car, his fucking contract - what sort of idiot started asking for it in the first place? Not him, that's for sure. He's retroactively disclaiming all responsibility.

"You didn't _have_ to," he says, quietly. Jack's blank wall stares back unseeingly at him, stippled and clean and slate blue. It's got no answers.

"You don't understand," Jack says.

No fucking shit I don't, Kent thinks. He kicks his resentment out at the wall in socked feet. And now his toes hurt. Great.

"If you're anywhere in my life," Jack says, slow and measured, like this is something he's thought about a lot, "I can't stay away from you. I don't know how to make boundaries so that you're on one side of them, and I'm on the other." Jack takes a deep breath, then lets it out. "And that was bad for me."

Shame bubbles up inside Kent: acid, nauseating. All of a sudden, he can't wait to get out of here. "Okay, I get it," he says. "Message received." He stands up from the bed, zips his suitcase carefully so that it won't jam again. "I'm going now, so you don't have to worry." Stick his feet in his shoes, as his tongue sticks in his throat. "Sorry for messing up your perfect life." The bitterness burns on its way out. He can only hope there's enough of a connection left that it burns Jack, too. One last parting shot.

He steps to the side so he can get past Jack without brushing their legs together, but Jack reaches out to grab him by the arm. "Wait."

Of course Kent waits. Jack's brushing his thumb up and down in sweeping movements over the thin skin of his inner forearm, just breathing. Kent couldn't move if he tried. This could be the very last time Jack touches him, ever -

"Um," Jack says, eventually. He rubs his forehead with his left hand, still not surrendering the grip his right hand has on Kent. "That wasn't what I was trying to say."

Kent doesn't know how to feel. Hope and dread spin, in mirror image, above his head, like a coin that's been tossed up so high he has to wait and wait for it to come down again. He's too tired for this, even already at nine in the morning, for Jack waiting while Jack sits staring into space and gently strokes over his pulse point with one finger, and says nothing.

Eventually Kent sighs: he's known for years now that he can't out-stubborn Jack out of silence. "What were you trying to say?"

Miracle of miracles, at least Jack answers. "Just," he says, "that it's not easy for me to let go of you."

"Could've fooled me."

Jack's hand tightens on Kent's arm till it hurts. "And now that you're in my life again. Kenny. There's no way I could let you go, just because you're getting on a plane."

Kent lets out the breath he's somehow been holding since mid-June. He sags back, boneless, against the wall, but Jack pulls him gently towards himself, so Kent goes. He wraps Jack's shoulders up in his arms, now that he's allowed to keep him, and lets his face rest on the top of Jack's head. Looking up, he sees, on the opposite wall of the room, where some framed photographs hang, wild Canada geese resting on a calm pond. Jack's right hand moves up his arm to cup his elbow, and Jack's left hand comes to rest, fingers splayed, reassuringly on his hip.

Kent breathes in, shakily. "So. Are we officially together, now? Or what?"

Jack's hand disappears from Kent's hip, which suddenly sprouts gooseflesh where a sliver of skin was bared, and Jack fidgets. "I don't have anything for you."

Kent steps back to get a better look at him. "Huh?"

"When I did this with Bittle," Jack starts, but Kent interrupts him.

"Zimms. Stop talking about your ex." Kent wouldn't have thought he'd need to keep saying that, but - Jack.

Is now looking around his room, looking for something. Meanwhile, the clock ticking in Kent's head, now that it's no longer counting down the potentially last seconds of whatever's been happening here all summer long, has switched over to noticing that it's past time to leave for his flight.

Jack gets up. He bumps into Kent, who moves too late to give him space, and quickly crosses the room to his desk, where he picks something off the crowded surface.

"What are you doing, Zimms," Kent says. "I need to get going."

"Just a second." Jack crosses back to Kent, sits in front of him on the bed again, and opens his cupped hands. Inside them is a ring. It's the Stanley Cup ring that Jack won in June.

Kent's first, crazy, split-second thought is simply _yes,_ and then, immediately on its heels, _no._ What the fuck, he knows about zero to sixty, but this is, like, zero to mach ten. Only then does he hear and processe what Jack's actually saying.

"Kent Vincent Parson. Will you be my boyfriend?"

Kent lets out an embarrassing squeaky sound, then stuffs his fist in his mouth, biting down on his fingers but still not quite hiding the grin poking out. It takes him a few seconds to manage words again. But - "Zimms! Yes. _You - !_ " okay, he's still speechless.

Jack grins up at him, as if he hadn't known, the bastard. Kent closes Jack's fingers back around the ring that he's still holding out to him. "But put that thing away. What do you think you're doing?"

Jack shrugs, and - is he _blushing?_ Kent thinks he is. "I wanted something to make it official."

Kent's mind goes blank. "I have two," he says, because he's an idiot.

"Oh, yeah. I knew that." Jack goes to put the ring away again, and Kent picks up his suitcase. It's time to leave, but he feels lighter, now. Like he's ready to fly, finally.

Kent hipchecks Jack as he passes by him, on the way out the door. Jack looks up, and Kent puts the shit-eating-est grin he has on his face. "So, do you want the 2010 or the 2012?"

"Huh?"

"When we trade," Kent clarifies.

"When we do - what? What?" But Jack looks pleasantly confused, and on that note Kent's gonna leave him, so he flips the snapback in his hand backwards onto his head and heads out the door. Or - he tries to. Jack traps him around the hips with one arm and around the shoulders with the other, before he's gotten more than a step away. Jack presses him into the doorframe and kisses him heavily, messily, tongue pushing into Kent's mouth. Kent gets with the program and presses back up against Jack. He sucks on his tongue long and hard, until Jack's breathing goes shallower, and then Kent pushes him away again.

"I really do have to go," he says.

"And I had to do that." Jack smiles. "Sorry not sorry."

Either Kent can't argue with that, or else he just doesn't want to. "Bye," he says. He's grinning so hard his cheeks hurt.

"I'll see you in October," Jack yells, not moving from his bedroom, as Kent walks quickly through the hallway and living room. "Are you sure you don't want me to drive you to the airport?"

"No, I'm good," Kent shouts back. He closes Jack's door behind him. He's ready for this. He's got this long-distance shit all ready to figure out, and with Jack! He runs down the stairs two at a time, puts his suitcase down to open the door, bends down to pick it back up, and -

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, shit.

He races back up the stairs to Jack's apartment, pounds on the door. He doesn't have a key, neither of them had even mentioned the possibility, but - anyway. Jack opens the door, and Kent collapses inside.

"What's wrong?" Jack says, but Kent sees her right down there. Trailing behind Jack's feet.

_"There_ you are," he says to Kit, and scoops her up with not inconsiderable relief. Kit squawks; she doesn't like being picked up with no warning in advance, but Kent holds onto her while she wriggles. He turns to Jack, who's looking at both of them with an expression Kent usually sees reserved for Kit alone. "I can't believe I forgot my cat."

"No, I can't either. You love her."

"I do," Kent says. I love you too, he thinks. But I'm leaving you here, and it's fine. "Now, her carrier's right - " by the door, where he'd put it. She doesn't like being locked in, either, so he murmurs soothing nonsense to her as he takes the both of them outside.

Find a taxi. If he missed the flight, he'll get on standby; but, he thinks, he's probably still safe. "He'll visit us in March," he tells Kit. "I know you miss him already. But you'll have to wait."

**Author's Note:**

> I am [multsicorn](http://multsicorn.tumblr.com/) on tumblr! Hit me up here, there, or anywhere if you wanna share the love for these fucked-up boys <3.


End file.
